Speaking on behalf of the judging panel, Elizabeth Webby said: ‘The books shortlisted for the Kibble Award present new insights into traumatic events and their lasting impact on Australian lives: the polio epidemic of the 1950s, Cyclone Tracy’s destruction of Darwin in 1974, Robert Farquharson’s murder of his sons on Father’s Day 2005.’

The Kibble and Dobbie Literary Awards are open to Australian female writers who have published a book of fiction or nonfiction classifiable as ‘life writing’. In 2014, the Kibble Literary Award was presented to Kristina Olsson for Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir (UQP) and the Dobbie Literary Award was presented to Kate Richards for Madness: A Memoir (Penguin).